21/04/08 - Nominet has issued an urgent call to action

From Hazell Pegg's website...

The Nominet Board has usually taken the view not to make recommendations as to how members should vote, however in this situation we feel that it is necessary considering the seriousness of these matters. For those members seeking Board guidance, the Board recommends that you:

• vote for adoption of resolution 6 for the introduction of independent non-executive directors
• do not vote for any of the three candidates that are against this resolution

In addition to the annual election of two non-executive directors to the Board the membership of Nominet are also being asked to approve several special resolutions to change the Articles of the Company.

Nominet is not the company it was back in 1996 when it was formed. It has grown into a company with a mulit-million pound turnover and is the custodian of the .uk namespace. A namespace that is now of increasing importance to the UK business community.

Special Resolution 6
Seeks to change the Articles to allow for the appointment of two non-executive directors,
in addition to the current four elected non-executive directors and the two executive directors.
This allows for the Board to recruit people with expertise that may be needed.
It also has the useful side-effect of making it more difficult for any special interest group to gain control of the Board.

The recommendation is to vote for Adam, Gordon and possible Dickie.

Namesco shamed in moneysupermarket.com survey

Money website moneysupermarket.com took a close look at contracts from 14 leading broadband providers (I wouldn't describe Namesco as "leading" in this area, they are more of a fringe provider compared with the likes of Virgin, Sky etc...

The research uncovered "surreptitiously imposed additional charges" and highlighted which of the providers had "the least transparent contracts."

It should come as no suprise that one of the firms named and shamed was our old friend, the "award winning" Namesco (now controlled by Italian Web 2.0 and mobile phone group Dada) which charges £25 plus VAT for a failed or missed payment! Thats worse than the UK banks who were recently wrapped in a Court Case bought be the OFT.

It seems Namesco have a problem with Terms and Conditions, as they were severely wrapped several years ago by the OFT for Exclusion Clauses and Unfair Contract Terms. (since closed)

1&1 Hosted Exchange Service suffers outage

Whoops picked this up on a Google News Alert. It seems 1&1's hosted exchange service provided by 1and1.com has been totally "unreachable" all day (26th April).

Apparently some users were reporting their Outlook Web Access (OWA), email push clients even Outlook got absolutely nowhere trying to establish a connection.

According to 1&1 tech support they were down for 14-16 hours as of about 10:30PM PST (UTC -8) though the status page at http://status.1and1.com had not apparently been updated.

1&1 Linux Web Hosting

For a limited time, 1&1 are offering three months free hosting on their Linux Web Hosting platform. Then s just £4.99 per month. Each hosting plan comes with free Web Building and Marketing Tools which is pretty comprehensive.

Recently 1&1 announced major changes to it's web hosting plans. ASP and PHP scripting was added to all its plans and free .co.uk, .me.uk and .org.uk are included for the life of the plan. Don't know what happens to those domains if you cancel, but I suspect you can transfer them to another tag as they will be registered in your name.

The PHP enhancements recently introduced on even the most "basic" plans are welcome as they allow a wider range of blogger and forum type applications to be installed in your webspace. Admittedly 1&1 provide free CGI's but these seem a little tacky. You are of course free to download any free CGI/Perl scripts you find on the internet and upload them to your 1&1 webspace!

About 1&1 Internet,( 1and1 Hosting ) Confusing?

Maybe its just me. But I've always thought there has been some confusion over 1&1's actual name. They are officially `1&1` but of course their websites are at 1and1.co.uk and 1and1.com obviously.

This forces some people to hunt on Google for the correct URL for 1&1, Some search for "oneandone." One or two searchers make common typo's such as `i&i` or `1&i` `i&1` `iandi` and so on, but despite this the company has become a massive success, and has earn't the title "the worlds web host."

This is because the company founded in 1992 by Ralph Dommermuth, operates on a global scale with over 15,000MBit of network capacity. 1&1 currently employ's over 150 developers and administrators. Total Employees amount to nearer 1,300.

Click Here for 1&1 web hosting review

Microsoft Windows Web Hosting

1&1 (1and) have extremely strong Microsoft Hosting options for those wanting .ASP, and .Net scripting capabilities. Prices are a little higher than for Linux based hosting but is still very good value, starting at £5.99 per month. Even the most "basic" plan hardly scimps on features including a free domain, website builder and PhotoGallery, togethor with 10GB of bandwidth.

1&1 were also one of the first to offer a Microsoft Hosted Exchange option as an alternative the Linux based IMAP and POP3 mail services more commonly found. This means small business can have a hosted email solution rather than having the expense of running their own Exchange server in the office

Additionally 1&1 offer Microsoft Sharepoint Hosting for an increasing number of organisations and teams wishing to setup online communities for document collaberation and development.

Weycrest Hostgator Speed Test

Quick and dirty test comparing the speed of UK Weycrest Shared Web Host and US based Hostgator.

The faster the server and page load, the less time visitor has to wait for a page to load in their web browser.

There are additional factors which can vary response times, for example database query (if you have a dynamic site) php script execution time and process, peak time etc.

Ping results show my Weycrest server is fast with ping times from my Entanet broadband connections less than 28ms

Pinging www.weycrest-coupon.com [85.13.195.119] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 85.13.195.119: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=55
Reply from 85.13.195.119: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=55
Reply from 85.13.195.119: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=55
Reply from 85.13.195.119: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=55

This also illustrates how important it can be to host in the UK if your target audience is mainly based in the UK. Let ping a US based web hosts

Pinging hostgator.com [67.18.54.2] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 67.18.54.2: bytes=32 time=137ms TTL=47
Reply from 67.18.54.2: bytes=32 time=138ms TTL=47
Reply from 67.18.54.2: bytes=32 time=138ms TTL=47
Reply from 67.18.54.2: bytes=32 time=138ms TTL=47

So there you have it. Your Weycrest UK website would be almost 5X faster than if it were were hosted in the US.

Lets try another host. How about 1&1?

Pinging 1and1.com [217.160.232.1] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 217.160.232.1: bytes=32 time=136ms TTL=46
Reply from 217.160.232.1: bytes=32 time=135ms TTL=46
Reply from 217.160.232.1: bytes=32 time=135ms TTL=46
Reply from 217.160.232.1: bytes=32 time=137ms TTL=46

So Weycrest (in my quick test) come out better against 1&1. But wait a minute where exactly is 1and1.co.uk hosted?

Tracing route to 1and1.co.uk [212.227.126.68]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1>

5 27 ms 27 ms 28 ms te4-3.telehouse-east.core.enta.net [87.127.236.8
1]
6 28 ms 28 ms 26 ms linx.gw-backbone-a.lon.schlund.net [195.66.224.9
8]
7 42 ms 43 ms 42 ms te-1-3.bb-c.bap.rhr.de.oneandone.net [212.227.12
0.49]
8 44 ms 45 ms 45 ms te-1-1.gw-dists-a.bs.ka.oneandone.net [212.227.1
16.208]
9 45 ms 47 ms 46 ms 1and1.co.uk [212.227.126.68]

Seems to route out to Germany. Thats another thing to watch. You might think you are getting UK based hosting, but in fact you end up your site hosted in Germany.

Also you stand a better chance of ranking well on Google.co.uk with a UK based IP address. This might give your site the edge if your competitors chose a slower overseas based hosts.